Report: ICE does bad job of overseeing deportable immigrants

WASHINGTON (AP) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation
officers aren't doing a good job of keeping track of immigrants
facing deportation but released from jail, an internal government
watchdog has concluded.

The Homeland Security Department's inspector general found that
ICE deportation officers are routinely assigned to manage
thousands of cases at a time and are so overburdened that the
agency likely isn't deporting all the immigrants it could.

Part of the problem, it said in a report, is that deportation
officers are routinely assigned duties beyond overseeing their
caseloads, including checking in immigrants for routine
interviews or driving immigrants from detention centers to court.

The result is that these officers don't have enough time to make
sure travel and identity documents are gathered for people
ordered back to their home countries.

ICE "will likely not be able to keep up with growing numbers of
deportable (immigrants)," the report said. They said that ICE
couldn't explain why caseloads were so heavy or how staffing
decisions and assignments were made.

The auditors made five recommendations, including that ICE come
up with a plan to appropriately staff deportation operations. ICE
agreed with all of the recommendations and said the agency is
working on fixes.

The report comes amid stepped up enforcement by ICE agents tasked
with finding and arresting immigrants in the country illegally.
Since President Donald Trump took office in January, ICE has
arrested more than 21,000 people, an increase of about 40 percent
compared to the same time period in 2016. Deportations during
that same time have dipped slightly.

Trump has proposed hiring 10,000 new ICE agents, though it's
unclear what jobs those new agents would fill.

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Report: ICE does bad job of overseeing deportable immigrants

WASHINGTON (AP) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation officers aren't doing a good job of keeping track of immigrants facing deportation but released from jail, an internal government watchdog has concluded.